Scrolling video API
Record any URL as a smoothly scrolling MP4 or GIF, in one call. For changelog demos, marketing hero clips, and showing a reviewer what a page actually does rather than what one frame of it looks like.
One request
No browser to drive, no ffmpeg to install, no frame-stitching script to maintain.
curl -X POST https://api.getsnap.dev/v1/video \
-H "x-api-key: sk_live_YOUR_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"url": "https://stripe.com",
"format": "mp4",
"duration_ms": 8000,
"fps": 24
}'What you can set
| Option | Range | Default |
|---|---|---|
format | mp4 (libx264) or gif | mp4 |
duration_ms | 2,000–30,000 | 5,000 |
fps | 10–30 | 15 |
viewport_width | 320–1920 | 1280 |
viewport_height | 200–1080 | 720 |
How it is made
Chrome DevTools Page.screencast samples frames at a high rate while the page scrolls, and ffmpeg encodes them. That matters for two reasons: the scroll is driven inside the browser rather than by moving a mouse, so it is smooth and repeatable; and the frames are real renders rather than interpolated stills, so lazy-loaded images and scroll-triggered animations appear as a visitor would see them.
What it costs
One credit per second of video, rounded up, minimum one. An eight-second clip is eight credits. A capture takes roughly its duration plus three seconds, so an eight-second video comes back in about eleven.
On Starter at $9/mo that is 625 eight-second clips a month. The price comparison has the per-capture arithmetic against other providers.
Where it is actually useful
- Changelog and release notes. A still cannot show a page that reveals content as you scroll. A clip can, and it embeds anywhere a GIF does.
- Marketing hero clips. Record a competitor-free, cookie-banner-free pass over your own landing page, regenerated automatically whenever the page changes rather than re-recorded by hand.
- Design review. Attach a clip to the ticket instead of asking the reviewer to deploy a branch.
- Archiving. A scroll-through records what a page looked like in a way a single screenshot of the fold does not.
Honestly, when not to use it
- You need a specific interaction. This scrolls; it does not click, type or hover. For a scripted flow, drive Playwright yourself.
- You need more than 30 seconds. The cap is deliberate — a long recording is a large file and a long-held browser. For something longer, record locally.
- A screenshot would do. If the page fits the fold, a capture is one credit instead of eight and arrives in two seconds.
Who else has this
Most of them, as it turns out. Of the four providers we compare against, three record scrolling video:
- ScreenshotOne — an
/animateendpoint, up to 30 seconds, and more output formats than us: MP4, MOV, AVI, WebM and GIF. - ScreenshotAPI.net — WebM, MP4 and GIF, and up to 60 seconds, twice our cap.
- Urlbox — records video on its higher tiers.
- ApiFlash — no video. PNG, JPEG and WebP only.
An earlier version of this page said only Urlbox also recorded video. That was wrong, and it was wrong in our favour, so it is worth correcting plainly rather than quietly: scrolling video is a normal feature of this category, not something that sets us apart. What differs is the price per capture, which the comparison covers. Checked 24 October 2026 against each vendor’s own documentation.